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LAS VEGAS — Can the Clark County School District effectively exempt itself from the Nevada state law mandating openness of public records?

That will be the real issue at stake tomorrow when the Center for Justice and Constitutional Litigation at the Nevada Policy Research Institute appears in court pursuing its demand that CCSD comply with the law.

NPRI, citing the Nevada Public Records Act, NRS Chapter 239, has requested that the district make available its government-issued and -maintained email addresses for public-school teachers.

The Eighth Judicial District court will hear and potentially rule on CCSD’s motion to dismiss. As detailed here, the school district’s motion to dismiss relies on out-of-context and irrelevant statutory excerpts.

What: Hearing in NPRI’s public records lawsuit against the Clark County School District.

When: July 2, 2013, at 8:00 a.m.

Where: Eighth Judicial District Court, Division VIII, Courtroom 16D, Regional Justice Center, 200 Lewis Avenue, Las Vegas, NV 89155.

Who: Parties include the Nevada Policy Research Institute, the Public Education Foundation, and the Clark County School District.  The presiding judge will be Douglas E. Smith.

Note: The Court schedules numerous hearings at once, and the particular order in which cases will be heard is unknown.

Requested in the lawsuit are 1) the public records, 2) that the court enjoin CCSD from delaying and denying future legitimate public-records requests, and 3) costs and attorney fees.

Case documents:

• An official copy of Defendant Clark County School District’s Reply in Support of Defendant CCSD’s Motion to Dismiss
• An official copy of the CJCL’s Opposition to Defendant Clark County School District’s Motion to Dismiss including attachments  
• An official copy of Defendant Clark County School District’s Motion to Dismiss
• An official copy of CJCL’s original complaint

The Center for Justice and Constitutional Litigation is a public-interest law organization that litigates when necessary to protect the fundamental rights of individuals as set forth in the state and federal constitutions.

Learn more about the Center for Justice and Constitutional Litigation and this case at http://npri.org/litigation/.

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LAS VEGAS — Today, the Nevada Policy Research Institute’s Center for Justice and Constitutional Litigation filed an opposition to the Clark County School District’s motion to dismiss the Center’s public-records case against CCSD.

NPRI, seeking a list of government-issued email addresses for CCSD teachers, filed its lawsuit on March 28, 2013. Relying on out-of-context excerpts of Nevada law, CCSD asked the court on May 24, 2013 to dismiss.

In the just-filed response, Joseph Becker, CJCL’s director representing NPRI in the lawsuit, identifies the tortured logic behind the district’s legal arguments against government transparency.

“CCSD has resorted to citing out-of-context excerpts of the law in order to try and justify not following Nevada’s Public Records Act. The law is perfectly clear — these government-issued email addresses for government employees are public information, and CCSD is obligated to release the records, instead of spending taxpayer dollars fighting to withhold from taxpayers this public information.”

Becker noted that the chief legal argument relied upon in CCSD’s Motion to Dismiss cites NRS 239B.040, a Nevada Statute of which even a cursory reading reveals is inapplicable to the legal issue at hand. 

“Although passages craftily — or deceptively — excerpted by CCSD suggest some relevance to this case, read in context, it is abundantly clear that NRS 239B was enacted to protect those who interact and provide private information to government from having certain information they disclosed, in turn, made public by government,” said Becker. “It certainly does not apply to records and information generated by the government itself.

“CCSD’s motion to dismiss also relies on NRS 603.070, a trade-regulation statute enacted to protect computer software programming code from being misappropriated. This, of course, is not relevant to NPRI’s public-records request of a non-proprietary e-mail directory generated by CCSD itself.

“Accepting CCSD’s tortured interpretation of NRS 603 to exclude the public records created with proprietary software programs would gut Nevada’s Public Records Law completely. For example, all government documents or correspondence created with Microsoft Word™ or Microsoft Excel™ would, under CCSD’s interpretation of the statute become non-disclosable because the documents were created, stored, and/or manipulated using proprietary software from Microsoft, Inc.”

NPRI’s Opposition to CCSD’s Motion to Dismiss also includes an affidavit from NPRI reporter Karen Gray giving four specific examples of how CCSD regularly delays and stonewalls her requests for records. In one case, it took over nine months and a meeting with then-superintendent Dwight Jones to receive the records she requested. CCSD has yet to fulfill two of her listed requests. The open-records statute generally allows five business days for the production of records.

Becker also stated, “Nevada court rulings have established that even email content from government officials’ mailboxes are subject to Nevada’s Public Records Act, so it’s a waste of tax dollars for CCSD bureaucrats to contend in court that government-provided email addresses for government employees are confidential.”

Becker then noted that the Nevada Supreme Court recently authoritatively re-affirmed that, under the NPRA, access to public records “must be construed liberally” and that restrictions on access “must be construed narrowly.”

A hearing on CCSD’s motion to dismiss is scheduled in Clark County District Court on July 2, 2013, at 8 a.m.

Read more:

• An unofficial copy of the CJCL’s Opposition to Defendant Clark County School District’s Motion to Dismiss without attachments is available here: http://transparentnevada.com/static/NPRI_Opposition_to_CCSD_Motion_to_Dismiss-Main.pdf
• An unofficial copy of the CJCL’s Opposition to Defendant Clark County School District’s Motion to Dismiss including attachments is available here (large file): http://transparentnevada.com/static/NPRI_Opposition_to_CCSD_Motion_to_Dismiss.pdf
• An official copy of Defendant Clark County School District’s Motion to Dismiss is available here: http://www.npri.org/docLib/20130611_Defendant_Clark_County_ School_
  District_s_Motion_to_Dismiss_Mdsm2.pdf
• An official copy of CJCL’s original complaint is available here: http://www.npri.org/docLib/20130328_NPRIvCCSDComplaint.pdf

The Center for Justice and Constitutional Litigation is a public-interest law organization that litigates when necessary to protect the fundamental rights of individuals as set forth in the state and federal constitutions.

Learn more about the Center for Justice and Constitutional Litigation at http://npri.org/litigation/.

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LAS VEGAS — Salary data for more than 132,000 government employees statewide, for the 2012 calendar year, is now available at TransparentNevada.com, a Nevada Policy Research Institute website that makes government-spending data easily accessible to taxpayers.

The new 2012 data — covering 58 government jurisdictions throughout Nevada, at state, county and city levels — includes several newly added jurisdictions.

 “Thanks to the information available at TransparentNevada, Nevada’s citizens, lawmakers, and media members are now able to easily see exactly how much government employees take home in compensation,” said Andy Matthews, president of NPRI. “Many government employees make staggering amounts.”

“For instance, more than 1,200 government employees throughout the state received over $200,000 last year in total compensation,” he added. “That list ranges from a Henderson deputy police chief who made over $559,000, a Clark County assistant district attorney who took home more than $522,000, a Las Vegas IT director who received over $356,000 and a Washoe County district health officer making over $209,000.

“Compensation for government employees isn’t outrageously high only because retiring employees legally fleece taxpayers by cashing in unused sick leave. Government compensation is inflated for many government workers, with over 22,100 making more than $100,000 in total compensation.”

Matthews noted that Las Vegas City Manager Elizabeth Fretwell’s $386,784 compensation package more than doubled the $181,586 earned by Gov. Brian Sandoval. Also earning more than the governor in total compensation were a human resources director making $220,908 with the Southern Nevada Water Authority, a community services director in Washoe County making $184,343 and the parks and recreation director in Henderson making $219,402.

In all, over 2,000 government employees made more than Sandoval last year.

The payroll data provides important information as the Legislature is considering measures to raise taxes so public employees can be paid even more.

“The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department currently wants the Legislature to raise taxes to balance its budget, but one glance at the numbers on TransparentNevada shows that Metro’s budget problems come from inflated salaries,” said Matthews. “High compensation comes standard in Metro, with 348 employees taking in over $175,000 and 2,204 employees making over $125,000.”

In 2012, 2,289 state employees made over $100,000 in total compensation, even with many of them taking six unpaid furlough days. Now the Legislature is considering a proposal to raise taxes while boosting state worker pay by eliminating furloughs.

Matthews added that one bright spot for taxpayers was that the number of Clark County firefighters earning over $200,000 has dropped from 199 in 2010 to 92 in 2012. However, in Las Vegas the number of firefighters earning over $200,000 dramatically increased from 79 in 2011 to 130 in 2012.

“The data on TransparentNevada is a vivid reminder that government employees are living high on the hog while taxpayers struggle,” said Matthews. “Although government employee unions frequently have made a big show of ‘contract concessions,’ where one of their many scheduled salary increases is skipped, this data leaves no doubt that thousands upon thousands of government employees are overpaid.”

Most government jurisdictions fulfilled requests for public-employee data, Matthews said.

“It was encouraging to see more jurisdictions than ever before fully comply with Nevada’s public-records law and provide full salary and benefit information,” he said. “Unfortunately, officials in a few places — such as Mesquite and Nye County — did not. These jurisdictions needlessly opened themselves to potential lawsuits.”

TransparentNevada, on the Web at http://TransparentNevada.com, was first launched in September 2008 and has served as a unique source of government-financing information for thousands of citizens, journalists and elected officials.

Matthews said that the site will be adding salary data from even more jurisdictions in the coming weeks.

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